Maryam Raeesdana

Great thanks to, Dr. Mehran Taghvaipour for translation, Mr. Majid Naficy for consultation and Natalie Bouroumand for some corrections on this story.

The title of this story is “The Island”. However, the island here is not like other islands. It is not a piece of land in the middle of a sea, an ocean, or a gulf. It is a poor neighbourhood in the city of Tehran. I found it in a book called A Survey in the Social Pathology of Iran. The book had already inspired me to write another story: The Bodyseller. I was reading the introduction of the survey book when I saw the word ‘bodyseller’. I had written my story six months before. I wrote my story after I had come back from Makhsoos Pharmacy at Karimkhan-Zand Bridge where I heard a weird story about homosexuals in the neighbourhood. I had written my story but did not have a title for it until I found the word ‘body seller’. more